Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/327

Rh and in the first instance as a cabin-boy; but at the age of eighteen he rose to the rank of mate, and only two years after to the command of a ship, in which he made several voyages to Greenland and other places. Afterwards he entered the revenue service, as first officer of an armed cruiser, in which he continued till 1820, when he obtained the government appointment of tide-surveyor of customs, and officiated in that capacity at the ports of Montrose, Kirkcaldy, Dundee, and Leith, till the close of his active and well-spent life.

Although the tempest-beaten shores and incessantly shifting skies of Orkney are so fitted to inspire poetical emotions though its wild scenery is fraught with such romantic historical remembrances and though its children are the descendants of those Vi-kings and Jarls, who wrought such wondrous deeds in their day, and of those Scalds who recorded them in song yet it is singular that so few Orcadians of the modern stock have distinguished themselves in the walks of poetry. A veritable Orkney poet, therefore, is the more valuable, on account of the rarity of the species and one of these few, as well as the choicest specimen of the whole, was David Vedder. The maternal education, although so early terminated, had not only made him a reader and a thinker, but had cultivated his poetical tendencies, so that the ocean storms, by which they might have been otherwise extinguished, only seem to have nursed them into full maturity. Even while a young sailor, and amidst the boisterous navigation of the Northern seas, his chief recreation as well as delight was poetry, so that he ventured at the early age of twenty-one to launch his first published poem into the pages of a magazine. Thus committed to the destinies of the press, other similar attempts quickly followed; and encouraged by the favourable reception they experienced, he commenced authorship in earnest, with a volume entitled the "Covenanter's Communion, and other Poems," which was published by Black wood in 1826. This work was so favourably received, that the whole impression was soon exhausted.

We can only give a brief enumeration of David Vedder's other works. To the "Covenanter's Communion" succeeded his "Orcadian Sketches" a production of prose and verse intermixed, in the strong sonorous poetry of which the ringing of his native storms predominates, while many of the events are reminiscences of his own early life. This was followed by a "Life of Sir Walter Scott," which was much read and admired, until it was superseded by the able and ample narrative of Lockhart. In 1841 he published a volume of his collected pieces, under the title of "Poems Legendary, Lyrical, and Descriptive." In 1848 he published, in conjunction with his son-in-law, Mr. Frederick Schenck, the distinguished lithographer, a splendidly illustrated volume, entitled "Lays and Lithographs," the whole of the letter-press of which was supplied by Mr. Vedder. His last principal work was a new English version of the quaint old German story of "Reynard the Fox," adorned with similar illustrations.

Besides these entire productions, Mr. Vedder was considerably employed, over a course of years, as a coadjutor in other literary undertakings. These, independently of numerous contributions to newspapers and magazines, consisted of additions to George Thomson's "Musical Miscellany," Blackie's "Book of Scottish Song," and Robertson's "Whistlebinkie." He also contributed the greater part of the letter-press to Geikie's well-known volume of "Etchings." As his authorship had commenced, in like manner it terminated, with the Covenanters; for during his last illness he was employed in the composition of